ContempConvos: I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Goodreads Summary:

If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line.

Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise—a quirky motel off California’s dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.

Review:

That’s exactly how I feel right now after just finishing I’ll Meet You There. I am floating in the stars happy. Gahhhhhhh I can’t seem to form coherent thoughts, but I shall try!

Skylar and Josh. They are both the perfect match for each other if there is such a thing. When Josh needed someone to put him in his place, Skylar was able to do it, when Skylar needed someone to be her friend, Josh was there. The other was always what the other needed. It is amazing to see such a perfect balance. Of course there were some issues Josh had to work through and Skylar as well, but at the end of the day, I really loved their relationship from friendship to something more.

What I really appreciated was the fact that a YA novel was able to marry a coming of age story with the aftermath of war for the soldiers that are lucky enough to come home. The difficulty to be a civilian again after seeing horrendous things. Reading stories like this make you appreciate even more the freedom that we experience in our day-to-day lives and the sacrifice the brave men and women who serve our country have done so we can be safe and sane. Please read the Author’s note at the end. You won’t regret it.

I will leave you with this quote which summarizes Skylar and Josh’s relationship.

“I had to tell him we were like a collage. Pieces that could be put back together in a new way, a better way. If I didn’t say it now, I never would.”